Learning to walk on a moving train
On travel
TW: this post discusses a mental health crisis
The sun was setting a little faster than I expected. It was increasing challenging to see each rung on the ladder as I made my way to the top of the mast.
The Panamanian rum that gave me the courage to climb up this mast in the first place was potentially impacting my dexterity as well.
It was 2014, and I was sitting (climbing) outside of my comfort zone. The cheers of my shipmates, fellow backpackers on a sailboat to Cartagena were becoming faint. I could vaguely hear Adam’s high school friend Tyler and my buddy Joe down below. A friendship that would carry on for many trips & a decade+ to follow. You had to time your jump with the swaying of the boat. Jump when the boat swayed inward and you risked landing back onto the boat itself versus plunging into the shimmering azure of the Caribbean sea.
I plunged into the sea.
The sailboat was navigated by a Croatian speed freak who took us through 30 hours of the roughest passage in the Caribbean en route to Cartagena. He ran aground on his very next voyage; the entire ship needed search & rescue by the Colombian Coast Guard and the boat was destroyed.
A year later I was taking shots from a wooden paddle on New Years Eve in Plettenberg Bay, South Africa. The week following I was a very last-minute invite to Kim & Lloyd’s wedding in Franschhoek where Adam was the best man. Hey, the seat was already paid for so why not change my flight? We had driven along the Garden Route, to get to Cape Town, free of cell service, taking impromptu dirt roads to award winning wineries.
I know its corny, but adventures frequently find their spark at the intersection of Fear of Missing Out (FOMO) & You Only Live Once (YOLO). A newly minted yes-mode approach to life is exhilarating.
I met Adam as I arrived in San Francisco just after-college. I was invited to a Jewish singles event that served as a quasi-Birthright held in the basement of a Nob Hill cocktail lounge. Lured as much by the $20 open bar as the chance to meet a partner, I joined my friend Danny who was with a buddy from UC Davis, a mountain of a man named Adam with a shock of red hair that blurted out, “not Jewish”, but as Adam later joked, he was “Jew-ish.”
Who was this character? Encouraging me to write Yelp reviews (!) so I could get invited to soft restaurant openings. This bro, throwing FUNdraising events with Nob Hill socialites.
Adam was a weathervane. Rugby sevens in Hong Kong, snowboarding in Whistler, and trekking El Chalten in Patagonia. His mother once told me that he learned to walk on a moving train.
Our friendship evolved gradually. About 4 years after meeting, I shot a flare up on Facebook that I was going to SXSW alone if anyone was going. Adam reached out and soon we were wandering around Austin at SXSW, both without a place to stay. Loose connections yielded unforgettable memories like a a private Alabama Shakes concert for 20 people in a backyard. Our lodging plan was drawn from his unshakable belief that everything will work out.
His housing proposed solution was to call up random people he had met, no matter how frayed the thread, and talk them into letting us crash. Upon arrival it would seem Adam was a ginger zombie, coming back to life after potentially ghosting our temporary hosts. Thankfully, there was always enough residual good will that we ended up with a place to stay. Hitchhiking back to our variable lodging each night, the bond of friendship sealed up quickly. This turned into a theme; in 2017 he invited Joe, Tyler, and I to climb Half Dome in Yosemite over Labor Day (he had won their lottery system) and neglected to tell us he hadn’t booked a campsite until we were driving over.
Living in New York, he’d gleefully tell new friends that we met at a Jewish singles event and that we spent so much time together that we were finishing each other’s….sandwiches. I later found out he stoke that joke from ‘Frozen.’
Compassion contradicted first impressions of carelessness. He boomeranged back to California, but he had a dedicated routine of calling to check-in with his friends. A phone call felt intimate compared to his default one-letter “k” text responses or typo filled riddles. The focal point of his interest was usually my relationships. If I happened to be dating someone, he wanted to be sure I was being met with a partnership fueled by mutual respect & shared values.
Although we were both California kids at heart, Adam’s return to New York was a homecoming and a victory lap. He was still always heading to the airport, but he doubled his energy on arrival back in New York. Our group of friends was nearing a decade in New York and a shot of adrenaline into our social life was appreciated
In late February 2019, he was back again, if not a little anxious seeming. I dismissed it cheerfully, “Wow, it must be really hard having your job pay for your move and put you up in corporate housing.”
Less than a month later, it was something else entirely. There was an swirling undercurrent of defeat. More jarring from a man who stacked his wins to the ceiling. More than once, I watched him enter a raffle, announce that he was going to win, and then do it. “Dude, Xbox!”
He insisted many times on keeping his struggles private; the few friends that were in the loop were in desperate need of our own support. But why not honor his wishes for something so temporary?
We didn’t know what we were doing. Telling both Adam and ourselves that this was just a form of recovery, “it’s like a torn ACL” I said, this new facility was the “best in the country”. It was a terrifying situation that thought I could deescalate with superlatives and comparisons to physical therapy.
We were building the plane while crashing.
At the end of May 2019, on a very rainy night of a very rainy month, we lost him.
What do you say to a community that didn’t know? Who only saw his one-man marketing campaign for a life well-lived. Shit, he was even in a scotch commercial! Golfing and camping as a handsome aspirational everyman.
How do you make small talk with the over 100 people who showed up at Sunny’s bar only 4 days later for a celebration of life? What explanation would satisfy the 200+ friends and family gathering in Marin a week later?
We tried our best? That supporting someone through a mental health crisis is like running in quicksand?
How many people does it take to save a life exactly? 10? 20? Even with the very very best doctors in the United States?
In the weeks that followed, friends & family shared found totems over a WhatsApp thread, but that rainbow sighting or song on the radio never landed with me.
“Pain is the least symbolic thing there is.” - Zadie Smith
And then it was Summer. When Adam went to Burning Man, I chalked his trips up to yet another checkbox in his itinerary of hedonism. His going provided little more inspiration than a shared chuckle about the bespoke “Playa wear” he had crafted for the experience.
Burning Man had always presented as too indulgent and self-serious for my liking. Maybe it was the woman who told me at the Phoenix Hotel in San Francisco that she had legally changed her name to Artemis after her Burn. Or was it the intensity in which burners breathlessly discussed the upcoming burn so many months in advance, conspirators on the world’s most insane camping trip. But I was at the intersection of FOMO and YOLO once again.
At my first Burning Man in 2018, “The Playa Provides” was an oft-repeated maxim that I met with quiet dismissal. Maybe it was something about set and setting, but Burning Man just didn’t stick. It was also really hot.
In Summer 2019, I was making my way back, honoring the promise that Adam and I had made to go back together as our schedules aligned.
A quart-sized Ziploc bag tucked into my backpack, notes passed from friends, his Newport Folk Festival bandanna calcified with his sweat, even a lock of Adam’s ginger hair and 1 of a 100 little gold beaded lions his friends in South Africa had crafted to honor his memory.
The Temple at Burning Man is meant to be a place for anyone to go for release. You go there to mourn a friend or even make peace with an enemy. By the end of the week, the Temple overflows with pictures, letters, clothing, whiskey bottles, even a surfboard.
The Temple is burned at the end of the week.
Walking into the Temple, you find yourself in this airy wooden structure flowing with a palpable energy. Grief yes, but also joy, calm, and comfort. It is the quietest place on the playa, there is no music played and people speak in whispers.
Friends from Adam’s camp found me through WhatsApp before the burn and at the hardest place on the planet to make plans, with no cell service, 110 degrees, and full sensory overload at every turn, people showed up on time and we celebrated and shared tears over our friend.
Since it was well into Burning Man, nearly every inch of the temple was already covered with mementos of lost loved ones. We tucked our photos, notes, and the bandana into a tiny open corner of a beam. New Orleans style, our wake segued into celebration.
Physically shocking, but commonplace at Burning Man, I found myself awake for 27 hours and riding my bike back to camp with my friend Dan. Our path intersected with an impressive art piece that I was told only worked at night.
It was a giant branching tree geometric metal tree about 15 feet tall, controlled by a solar-powered LCD screen. As you change inputs on the LCD, thousands of lights react in countless programmatic patterns and colors. An older man walked out of the darkness wearing a cow suit.
Elder Cow:“Hi! I’m The Wiz! Would you like to know about my art piece?”
Me: Uh sure (internal monologue: Man I’m tired, how long is this going to take?)
Elder Cow Man aka The Wiz: “Well - it’s about the multiverse! In this life, you could become a millionaire, while in another life you could be hit by a bus tomorrow! There are infinite universes. There’s even a universe where the hokey pokey isn’t what it’s all about!”
Me: Gosh - thank you!
Dan hadn’t been to the Temple yet, so I got on my bike and rode alone back to camp through a rare patch of darkness and silence. A stolen moment with my thoughts. I played my favorite Burning Man game, “Was that profound or am I just really tired?”
As I rode into camp, I heard “There’s Gabe now.” I looked up into our perch and there was Tyler. Drawn from a sleepless night in LA a few days earlier to buy a last minute ticket to Burning Man, get the very last seat on the Burner Express bus and land himself at our camp at 4am.
Adam had pulled another friend out of his comfort zone and on the road to adventure, shifting our reality yet again.
There’s another reality where my best friend is riding next to me laughing through the dark and dust. There’s another reality where he blew off Burning Man to go to Croatia or Puglia or who knows where.
I’m on the long drive back to Reno when my cell phone jumps back to life as we enter the default world. Adam! Where you been buddy? Where are you heading next? We have our whole lives to go.
Epilogue:
Adam continues to pull our community out into the world. As I think you know, Tiffany and I walked away from our W2s for over year. Alex built out a Landcruiser and was just making coffee in Arches. Gadi is still teaching in Mexico City. Joe & Marissa are in Rwanda. Kim & Lloyd are still holding it down on Table Mountain. And Tyler, well, I asked Tyler to turn on find my friend because he’s in the wind.
Love love love xx
It's clear that Adam made a profound impact on your life and touched the hearts and souls of many others. May you find strength and comfort in the memories you all created together. ::Hugs::